“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You cannot kill. As long as you can extinguish a human consciousness forever, then murder and killing are crimes. And you must deal with them. As long as you believe in the reality of violence, then violence is a crime, and you reap its fruits. There will never be a justification for killing or violence.

Since there is no death, in your terms, there is no murder. We will have some long sessions dealing with this matter, but I tell you all now—no good will come of violence. The gains that seem to be won will end in the violence of those who bring them about. The violence will be reborn in them. It will be part of their reality, and others will turn against them. This applies to any people at any time.

When every young man refuses to go to war you will have peace. As long as twenty men insist on fighting a war you will not have peace. As long as you fight for gain and greed you will not have peace. As long as one person commits violence for the sake of peace you will have war. Unfortunately, in the condition in which your world finds itself, it is extremely difficult to imagine that all the young men in all of the countries at the same time will refuse to go to war. And so you must work out the violence that violence has wrought.

(There followed a discussion about the place of protest and violence in the world today—this violence as a means to correct injustice and to get people to accept all other people and their “thing” without prejudice or the judgment of someone else’s values. Sue and Ned of the younger generation were proponents of “pro “ and others were either “con” or neutral or philosophical.)

Violence, in your level, is the other face of creativity, but you do not realize it and it is you who have set up the separation. All life, in certain respects, involves what you call violence. Breath is a violence, it is simply where you draw the line. All living is a thrusting out toward, and joyful thrusting out toward, the energy that you have not learned, as yet, to use creatively, you call violence. [...]

Now, the point that our friend over here (Sue) was trying to make earlier is related, to some extent, along these lines in that you can become so afraid of violence that you overemphasize its effect. [...] You can do the same thing without realizing it by projecting into the idea of violence, all powers, and then it seems to you that life itself has no ability to protect itself and that any stray thought of violence or disaster will immediately zoom home and that the recipient has no way to protect himself. [...]

There was a civilization, and I am writing this in my book and some of you know of it—a civilization, in your terms, in your dim past, in which a group of human beings tried to form a physical body that could not act violently and when violence was threatened the body automatically closed off from action. [...] These people thought then that violence would be wiped away from the face of the earth, and they hoped to begin a race of people that would not know violence. [...]

They were so on the outlook for violence that their entire system of communication was built upon fear, for they could not protect themselves, they could only run. [...] To yell out into the air, as I am doing, does a violence to the atoms and molecules. Your blood rushing through your body does violence to it then. [...]

(10:33.) The vitality of the civilization was therefore weak — not because violence did not exist, but because freedom of energy and expression was automatically blocked along specific lines, and from outside physically. They well understood the evils of violence in earthly terms, but they would have denied the individual’s right to learn this his own way, and thus prevented the individual from using his own methods, creatively, to turn the violence into constructive areas. [...]

They were particularly concerned in the beginning with developing a human being who would have built-in safeguards against violence. [...] Now psychologically you can see vestiges of this in certain individuals, who will faint, or even attack their own physical system, before allowing themselves to do what they think of as violence to another.

The energy, often in your time given over to violence, went instead into other pursuits, but began to turn against them. They were not learning to deal with violence or aggression. [...]

[...] These Lumanians died quickly, for they could not bear violence nor react to it violently. They felt however, that their mutant children might have a resulting disinclination toward violence, but without the prohibiting nerve-control reactions with which they were endowed.

The child even then realized that violence and aggression was somehow connected with his mother’s illness. He also, that is Ruburt also, felt the violence that is a part of his father’s personality. [...]

The child took all this as the punishment for violence. [...] Not only that, but she was helpless to resist violence. [...]

She did express this violence, and again with fury, through verbal attacks to which Ruburt was extremely sensitive. But Ruburt did not even dare to express his violence verbally, because of the parent-child relationship. [...]

[...] It only turns into violence, and into a fear of violence, when it is so meticulously denied.

[...] If you agree that violence is power then you will punish the criminal with great vindictiveness, for you will see life as a power struggle, and will concentrate upon the acts of violence about which you read. This may bring such aspects into your personal life, so that you yourself meet with violence — hence deepening your conviction. [...]

[...] (See Chapter Six, and the 633rd session in Chapter Eight.) Augustus felt powerless, considering power in terms of aggression and violence, so he isolated that portion of himself from himself and projected it into a “second self.” [...] And here aggression was equated with violence.

[...] Both imply great action and vitality, and an aggressive thrust that has nothing to do with violence. Yet many people have physical symptoms or suffer unpleasant situations because they are afraid to utilize their own power of action, and equate power with aggression — meaning violence. [...]

[...] Both sides accept the concept of human aggression and violence as a method of survival. [...]

[...] You confuse violence with aggression, and do not understand aggression’s creative activity or its purpose as a method of communication to prevent violence.

You deliberately make great effort, in fact, to restrain the communicative elements of aggression while ignoring its many positive values, until its natural power becomes dammed up, finally exploding into violence. Violence is a distortion of aggression.

Violence is basically an overwhelming surrender, and in all violence there is a great degree of suicidal emotion, the antithesis of creativity. [...]

[...] Normal aggressiveness is basically a natural kind of communication, particularly in social orders; a way of letting another person know that in your terms they have transgressed, and therefore a method of preventing violence — not of causing it.

[...] Regardless of what you have been told, hatred does not initiate strong violence. As covered earlier in this book, the outbreak of violence is often the result of a built-in sense of powerlessness. [...]

[...] They feel so powerless that this adds to their difficulties — so they try to liberate themselves by showing great power in terms of violence. [...]

[...] They turned against the idea of violence, and each in his own way recognized the personal psychological ambiguities of their feelings during combat.

[...] This is the reason for the incidents of violence on the part of returning servicemen.¹

[...] As long as one person commits acts of violence for the sake of peace, you will have war. [...] And so you must work out the violence that violence has wrought. [...] Remember, you do not defend any idea with violence.

[...] “There is never any justification for violence. [...] Those who indulge in violence for whatever reason are themselves changed, and the purity of their purpose adulterated.

After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., my students in class were quite upset, and like many people throughout the country and probably the world, we began to discuss the meaning of violence. [...]

[...] The older adults began complaining about the rioters with some bitterness, however, until Sue said with some heat: “Well, I’m against violence, too. [...]

[...] I am not condoning those violences that occur. [...]

(Today the newspaper carried the story of the violence attending the Democratic presidential convention in Chicago in August, 1968, telling of the many clashes between police and various groups of demonstrators; and a guilty verdict re police behavior was rendered by an investigative commission. [...]

They may return, even enduring violence, as a man might set up a school amid a jungle of savages. [...]

The violence that you were both speaking of this evening opened up a chasm within each participator’s soul, through which he glimpsed the dizzying origins that were behind his identity. [...]

[...] I am not condoning those violences that occur. [...]

(Today the newspaper carried the story of the violence attending the Democratic presidential convention in Chicago in November 1968, telling of the many clashes between police and various groups of demonstrators; a guilty verdict re police behavior was rendered by an investigative commission. [...]

[...] They may return, even enduring violence, as a man might set up a school amid a jungle of savages.

The violence that you were both speaking of this evening opened up a chasm within each participator’s soul, through which he glimpsed the dizzying origins that were behind his identity. [...]

“Violence will always be used creatively. [...] Beyond that, however, in the meantime the violence that you do, you do to yourself. [...] Violence will always be used creatively, but if you do not understand this—and at your present rate of development you do not—then any violence is violence against yourself. This applies to each of you, for when you think in terms of violence you think in terms of malice or aggression. [...]

[...] Therefore they seek to assure themselves that they are indeed powerful through antisocial acts, often of violence.

[...] Since they believe so strongly in the power of others, and in their own relative powerlessness, they feel forced into aggressive actions almost as preventative measures against greater violence that will be done against them.

[...] And so for release that it turns into violence, both individually and en masse. You are so afraid of violence that you do not try to understand what lies behind it. [...] Violence is a distortion of a thrust toward activity and when you realize this you can use it creatively. [...]

[...] You have been rather pedantic in several past lives and given in one particularized in Spain, as a priest, to severe attitudes and ideas that lead you, alternately, toward violence and peace. [...]

[...] Then immediately forget it and imagine the vitality of the universe as being strong enough and wise enough to absorb your petty violence and survive. [...]

[...] But if you ignore the feeling or pretend that it does not exist, then it is repressed within you and it draws to it all those other repressed violences; minute, insignificant details, seemingly, that gain charge until they fill you and must be expressed. [...]

Your Ella, then, reacted against the repressed violence which has always been a part of that family structure as it is composed of its various personalities. She reacted vehemently against this repressed violence. [...]

[...] She felt she was set apart, but also that she was set apart because she could not tolerate violence. Violence frightened her deeply.

[...] The desire and the intent to do violence almost inevitably brings forth violence.

[...] She deeply reacted against violence, and was overly sensitive.

[...] Violence only ur plane. Problems worked out (tr no) thru action are bound to lead to violence.

Any action is violence, after all.

[...] While they were not able to solve the problem of violence as they understood it in your reality, their passionate desire to do so still rings throughout your own psychic environment.

(9:13.) Various old religions picked up the idea of the Lumanians’ fierce god figure for example, in whom they managed to project their concepts of force, power, and violence, this god who had meant to protect them when nonviolence would not allow them to protect themselves.

[...] Their peculiar fear of violence intensified all of their mechanisms to an amazing degree. [...]

Communication, in fact, was one of their strongest points, and it was developed to such a high degree simply because they feared violence so deeply and were constantly on the alert. [...]

[...] The inability to face up to violence and learn to conquer it meant, of course, that they also severely hampered a certain thrusting-out characteristic. [...]

I do not necessarily mean physical power however, but so much of their energy was used to avoid any meeting with violence that they were not able to channel ordinary aggressive feelings, for example, into other areas.

[...] Doing violence to your body, or another’s, is a violation. Doing violence to the spirit of another is a violation — but again, because you are conscious beings the interpretations are yours. [...]

[...] As long as you believe that violence must be met with violence you court it and its consequences. [...]

[...] Because you consider aggression synonymous with violence, you may not understand that aggressive — forceful, active, mental or spoken — commands for peace could save your life in such a case; yet they could.

[...] Now you have some idea in your head that good is gentle and bad is violent and that no violence can be good and this is because in your mind, violence and destruction are the same thing. [...]

[...] You equate violence with evil. Now, when I speak to you, I do not equate violence with evil anymore than I equate a summer storm which is violent with evil. [...]

Now three weeks later we have another encounter and our poor ignorant workman falls asleep again at his chore and our good minister comes by and he looks and he sees the idle one upon the floor snoozing and he thinks, I would like to kick you in the you know where, but he thinks, oh no, I cannot think such an unChristian thought and violence is wrong, so before he even admits to himself what he feels and hiding from himself any acknowledgment of aggression. [...]

[...] And (very loud voice) I will not tell you this is creative violence. [...]

[...] Then you are free to misplace violence and you are free from it. [...] Every other nation, every other people form their own violence and is responsible for their own miserable condition, but my people—they are right! [...]

[...] And there is no justification for violence. [...]